G20 utter bloody failure on tax avoidance

Close down tax havens and you’d close down tax avoidance. And the world economy would be £250bn better off a year.

Instead, we’re going to give the IMF another £750bn of our money – that’s your money and my money – while the tax dodgers will continue to laugh in our faces.

It was China that put the boot into Sarkozy’s plan to publish a list of tax havens. (China needs the money that’s laundered via Hong Kong and Macao.) But I didn’t notice Sarkozy getting any real support from the UK. (Probably because much of our so-called aristocracy is up to their necks in tax avoidance schemes – including financial watchdog Lord Myners, for God’s sake.)

This is ridiculous. Corporate tax avoidance is not a side issue to the credit crunch. It’s one of its causes. Tax havens and their secrecy infrastructure make it impossible for companies to trust each other’s balance sheets. It’s an important reason why companies are so wary of lending each other money.

I was really hoping that the whole issue of corporate tax avoidance would just evaporate. But while the G20 trumpets all kinds of success, it’s at our expense – and once again, the architects of the credit crunch slip off the hook.